


'Accidents Happen' Isn't Always a Viable Excuse

by chali



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [12]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gen, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt Lance (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-03-02 08:36:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18807589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chali/pseuds/chali
Summary: I shouldn't have left him, Keith berated himself. Why did I leave him? The woods fell silent, which only added to his panic. What have they done to him? What if they've already killed him? He shook his head free of the thought, and scanned the trees around him. He wasn't going to give Lance up so easily, not when he was still able to fight. He waited and watched and listened for a few more minutes, but either his pursuers had lost his trail or they'd been satisfied with finding Lance, because Keith seemed to be in the clear. He turned in the direction Lance's screams had come from, and set off at a jog.--Lance and Keith accidentally break a sacred artifact when sent on a mission on a planet that they thought was unoccupied. The inhabitants are not happy.





	'Accidents Happen' Isn't Always a Viable Excuse

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Dragged by the Ankle
> 
> I feel like I kinda got carried away and strayed from the prompt a bit, but oh well. Enjoy!

"Ugh, this heat," Lance groaned. Again. 

"Lance," Keith grumbled ahead of him, barely out of breath. Lance flipped him off behind his back before wiping more sweat of his forehead. 

"I'm serious, though, man," he continued in between huffs of breath. "How the hell are you not even sweating at this point? Does this heat not affect you at all?"

"I like the heat," Keith shrugged, sounding caught somewhere between smug and defensive. "I mean, I wouldn't really have lasted a whole year in the desert if I couldn't handle a little heat."

"Oh yeah," Lance conceded thoughtfully, "I always forget you actually lived out there." He looked at Keith where he was trudging ahead of him. _How could he stand it?_ He wondered, not for the first time. _How could he stand that kind of isolation?_

Lance remembered the first time he spent more than a week away from home, visiting a friend. He had loved the freedom and the independence and the adventure of it. For about a day, anyway. After a while, though, and rather suddenly, he had started missing home so fiercely it had ached, deep in his chest. He ended up going home a few days early, and couldn't bring himself to stray far from home for a long while afterwards. 

To spend an entire year out there, in that vast desert, alone, no family or friends, nothing... it's a wonder he never went insane-

Lance stumbled as his foot caught on something, a loud _beep_ echoing throughout the forest around them. He turned, confused, and heard Keith do the same.

"Oh, shit," he muttered, feeling his stomach drop as he spotted the red flashing light on what was undoubtedly some sort of alarm he had just set off. "Shit! Keith, I-"

"We gotta go," Keith grabbed his elbow and tugged him along, and they both made a break for it - already they could hear shouts in the distance. Together they ducked under tree trunks and leapt over rocks and roots. They were going as fast as they could, but they were unfamiliar with the terrain, and often stumbled. It wasn't long before they shouts from behind them were accompanied by footsteps.

Lance tripped and went sprawling when a shot was fired, the blast soaring overhead. He heard Keith swear in front of him, and as he struggled to rise to his feet saw him turn back - just in time to take a shot to the shoulder.

"Keith!" The Red Paladin stumbled back, hand rising to grasp at the smoking wound. He looked at Lance with wide eyes, and then beyond him to where their pursuers were still coming. "Go," Keith looked back at Lance, panic creeping in around the edges of his gaze. Lance rose his voice over the start of Keith's protest, "We'll split up, confuse them. I'll meet you back at the Lions. _Go!"_ Keith hesitated only a moment longer before nodding and sprinting away, quickly disappearing among the dense tree trunks. Lance climbed to his feet, hissing as a shot landed in the space his hand had just been resting, and began running in a different direction.

He went as fast as he could, ignoring the painful twinge of his twisted ankle, and the unbearable heat pressing down on him, and the tightness of his chest as he struggled to breathe. He wondered briefly if they had fallen for his trick, or if they were still only chasing Keith. His question was answered almost immediately when his head almost got blasted off. Again. Lance gasped and changed direction, trying to figure out where the Lions must be from where he was now -

He _screamed_ as a sharp, sudden pain shot up his leg, sending him crashing to the forest floor yet again, bayard flying out his grasp. He cried out again, the pain unceasing, and looked down in terror. _A trap,_ he realised. _I'm running from angry aliens shooting at me with blasters and I end up getting caught in a fucking trap?_ He bit his lip against any further exclamations of pain that would give away his location as he leaned forward to examine it. It looked like a bear trap - like an actual _Earth_ bear trap. He groaned, shaking fingers hovering over where the teeth were sunk into his ankle. The people chasing him were catching up, he could hear them.

 _I can't run,_ he realised. _Even if I pry this off I can't run._ The tightness in his chest worsened, his breaths coming in short, fast pants. _They're going to kill me._

But they didn't. When they found him, bleeding and glaring at them and just barely managing to bite back his panic, they took one look at the trap he was caught in and lowered their guns. Lance gritted his teeth as two of them approached and began patting him down. He didn't fight back, didn't want to risk them changing their minds. They finished their examination of him and said something to the leader that Lance missed, agony making his head spin. The leader responded in an angry voice, looking at Lance with fury and disgust. Lance winced, and tried to look apologetic.

It wasn't like he had _meant_ to break their urn thing. He and Keith hadn't even known they were on an occupied planet, let alone trespassing on sacred ground. It was an honest to god _accident_.

Lance suspected it wouldn't matter to this guy.

"L-look, fellas. Clearly there's been a, _ah_ , misunderstanding-"

"Misunderstanding?" The leader echoed, startling Lance, "It was _not_ you who destroyed one of our sacred artifacts? It was someone else?"

"W-well, yeah, i-it was me, but-"

"Then there is no 'misunderstanding'. There is no excuse. You shall answer for your crime."

"Come on, man, let's talk about this-"

"No more talking." He waved a hand, and Lance abruptly found himself chewing on a thick leather gag, wincing as he felt the fingers tying it behind his head pulling on his hair. His hands were also being tied, and Lance found himself wishing he had kept his Paladin gloves on. He would rather suffer through the sweltering heat than the coarseness of the rope they were using. He tried to keep his hands held apart slightly, just enough so that when they stepped away the rope would be loose enough for him to wriggle free - but they were stronger than him, and were in no forgiving mood. All it took was one particularly harsh tug on the rope, and Lance's wrists were pulled and tied together painfully tight.

Lance winced, and started trying to talk around the thick fabric in his mouth, when the pain in his leg suddenly spiked unbearably. He looked down with a shout, and was horrified to see one of the creatures lifting the chain attached to the trap, removing it from where it was bolted into the ground. He looked back up at the leader, and saw the cruel smirk curling his mouth. Lance shook his head frantically, shouting incomprehensibly through the gag and begging with his eyes - but it made no difference. The leader nodded his head, and the alien carrying the chain began to walk. The second the chain went taught, Lance felt an agony more acute than anything he had ever felt before. His vision went white, and he was vaguely aware of himself screaming shrilly. He could feel the metal grinding against the bone of his ankle, the teeth sinking impossibly deeper, tearing his flesh, blood spilling down his leg. He screamed again - his tormentor did not care, and gave another cruel tug.

Lance let himself fall into oblivion.

* * *

Keith growled as he heard another muffled scream in the distance, the voice painfully familiar.

"Dammit," he muttered, hiding behind a trunk as he heard movement close by, clutching his burning shoulder tightly in one hand and his bayard in the other. _I shouldn't have left him,_ he berated himself. _Why did I leave him?_ The woods fell silent, which only added to Keith's panic. _What have they done to him? What if they've already killed him?_ He shook his head free of the thought, and scanned the trees around him. He wasn't going to give Lance up so easily, not when he was still able to fight. He waited and watched and listened for a few more minutes, but either his pursuers had lost his trail or they'd been satisfied with finding Lance, because Keith seemed to be in the clear. He turned in the direction Lance's screams had come from, and set off at a jog, stubbornly ignoring his own pain.

It didn't take him long at all to find it, the spot where they'd caught the Blue Paladin. Lance had dropped his bayard in whatever struggle had transpired, and Keith quickly picked it up and hung it on his belt. He swallowed back bile as he took in the puddle of blood, and the thick trail of it leading back in the direction of the temple they had inadvertently trespassed upon. _This is too much blood,_ Keith realised, feeling ill. _Even if Lance isn't already dead, he will be soon if I don't get to him fast._ Keith tightened his grip on his own bayard and started following the trail, moving as cautiously and quietly as he could. Even so, he was still uncomfortably aware of the crackle his boots made each time they landed upon the dead leaves and fallen branches, the sounds seeming to echo in the silence around him.

The trail of blood never seemed to lessen, and Keith grew ever more fearful that Lance had already perished. _He hasn't,_ he kept telling himself firmly. _He'll be fine. I'll find him, and I'll get him back to the Castle. Coran will put him into a pod, and he'll be fucking fine._ He believed it less and less the longer he followed the trail. The seemingly never ending trail. Finally, he came upon the temple - though it could much more accurately be called a ruin. _Can they blame us for thinking it was deserted? The place is barely standing._

Indeed, the walls were crumbling, and had collapsed completely in some places. The wildlife had covered the majority of the stonework, vines climbing the bricks and bushes growing between the cracks. Whatever wooden beams had been supporting the roof must have eroded away years ago, leaving the inside open and exposed to the elements. Keith shook his head as he looked at it again, anger surging through his veins. These people dared to attack them over accidentally breaking some sacred object when _this_ is the state they let their temple fall into? Keith spotted movement from the corner of his eye, and crouched behind a thicket. He looked over, and saw Lance.

 _He's dead,_ was Keith's first, horrible thought. _No,_ he concluded as he watched the aliens begin to tie a long strip of fabric above the Blue Paladin's leg. _They wouldn't be treating him if he was already dead. They want him alive._ He could see something just below where they were tying the fabric, and he furrowed his brows as he tried to make it out - _that's a trap. That's a fucking bear trap_ \- he did retch, now. He tried to stay as quiet as he could while his nausea got the better of him. He had seen those traps before - had _used_ one similar to catch jack rabbits when he had been living in the desert. He remembered the broken bodies, the blood and bone, the agony and terror in their eyes.

"Jesus," Keith whispered, spitting. He breathed harshly through his nose for a few moments before he was sure his stomach was finished rebelling against him, then he resumed his watch. They had finished tying Lance's leg, and had begun to drag him again - by the chain of the trap, Keith was infuriated to see - toward the stairs the hunters had emerged from in the first place. Keith cursed. Who knew how massive a labyrinth these people had underground. If he didn't act quickly Keith would lose Lance, and wouldn't be able to find him again before he either bled to death or these people killed him. But there was no opening for Keith to slip through - there were guards posted all around the entrance, Keith counted six of them. He was hidden right at the edge of the woods, and from there to the entrance there was nothing but open terrain. He would be spotted immediately. There was no way for him to get in unnoticed.

 _I'll just have to be noticed then,_ he thought to himself, and hid his and Lance's bayards in the foliage behind him. He took his knife from his belt and slipped it under the armour behind his back, remembering how they had tied Lance's hands behind his. He took a deep breath, then turned and walked forward - right out from his cover and into the open. The aliens noticed him almost immediately, and within seconds Keith had six guns pointed at him. He fought against the impulse to reach back for his knife, and gritted his teeth as he took slow steps forward.

"I'm here for my companion," he said, already knowing it was pointless. He raised his arms as they approached him, holding them above his head in a peaceful gesture - but apparently he moved too fast for their liking, because a second later he found himself on the ground, blinking away stars. His vision cleared quickly enough for him to see the guard who had hit him straightening up, wiping a bright smear of blood off the butt of his gun. Keith spat, and struggled to rise again.

"I'm not here to cause any trouble-"

"You are here to die."

Keith looked up at the people surrounding him, and saw what he had already anticipated: hatred, fury, bloodlust. _You expected this_ , he reminded himself firmly, willing his heartbeat to slow before he gave himself away. _Just wait. Patience yields focus._ He swallowed back any protests he might have otherwise made as they pulled him forcefully up into a kneel, and bent his arms to tie them behind his back with coarse rope. He had to bite his lip against a cry of pain as the action jostled his wounded shoulder. He didn't fight against their grip as they jerked him to his feet and began marching him over to the entrance of their underground dwelling. They didn't say anything else to him, and he somehow managed to hold his own tongue in return.

Three of them remained by the entrance, and the other three led him down a steep flight of stairs, wound in a tight circle that made his bruised head spin. _A concussion was the absolute last thing I fucking needed right now_ , he thought to himself bitterly. By the time they reached the bottom Keith was swallowing back more bile, and he wondered briefly if he would be able to fight so many people in such a state. _I have no choice, either way. Lance will be killed if I don't do something._

"... came for the other one," one of the guards was saying, to someone that Keith assumed was a leader of some kind, judging by the gold inlay on their armour, "We didn't find any weapons." The leader narrowed his eyes at that, and stormed over to where Kieth was being held. Keith stared back at him, not allowing his eyes to betray any of the impatience or anger or adrenaline that was coursing through his veins. The alien held his gaze stubbornly for a few long seconds, then raked his eyes across Keith's body in search of a weapon. _If he finds the knife now I'm screwed,_ an unhelpful part of Keith's brain supplied. But whatever the alien saw, or didn't see, seemed to satisfy him, as he turned away and headed towards a door at the opposite end of the room.

"Take him down to the cells, we'll execute them together."

 _'Down'_ , Keith latched onto, _Lance is downstairs somewhere_. Keith had planned on breaking free as soon as he got a hint of Lance's location - but now he reconsidered. There were still more men on him than he'd anticipated, his shoulder was burning and his head was pounding. He'd have to wait until he got somewhere more isolated before he made a move, so that they couldn't call for help. He allowed them to lead him out the door, down a corridor, down another corridor, and another, down some stairs, down another corridor, through a room, down more stairs... and he grew increasingly panicked the further they went. _I won't remember all of this,_ he kept thinking. _I'll never_ \- he looked down and caught a flash of red. _Oh. This is Lance's blood,_ he realised. _Lance has left a trail of blood. Like Hansel and fucking Gretel._ He almost laughed.

After discovering their gruesome escape route Keith stopped paying attention to their twists and turns, and a short while later found himself being led into a dark, cold room. He could just barely make out bars at the opposite end of the room, the light from the corridor coming in through the entrance, and heard a familiar groan coming from one of the cells lining the walls. _Lance_. He looked at the three guards still manning him. _It's now or never_.

His knife was in his hands and slicing through the rope before any of the guards realised what was happening, and by the time they did one of them was already dead. The next one managed to duck under Keith's swipe, and barrelled his shoulder into Keith's midriff on his way back up, knocking him onto his back and leaving him winded. He heard the third guard cocking his gun. _There's no time for this,_ he thought, growling as he heard Lance groan again as he was roused by the commotion. The guard that had knocked him over was still on top of him, and when Keith angled his knife and transformed it into its sword form, the blade pierced through their chest and exited their back. Keith hurriedly rolled them off of him, but before he could pull the sword back out a shot rang out, and pain blossomed again in his shoulder. He cried out, his arm falling uselessly to his side. He had barely finished screaming before a second shot landed in his side, leaving him utterly breathless.

He heard muffled protests coming from the cell, and turned to see the Blue Paladin looking at him with wide, scared eyes.

"L-Lance - _ah_ -" Keith cried out again as the guard sank a hand into his hair and yanked him up, until he was kneeling with his head titled back painfully. The hot barrel of the gun was pressed tightly against his throat. 

"Tradition is that blasphemers are executed together," the guard hissed into his ear, panting harshly, "but don't think for a _tick_ that I'll hesitate to kill either of you right here and now. Because I won't."

Keith lost his balance when the guard shoved his head forward roughly, and he fell to the ground again, grunting as he caught himself on his injured arm and it folded beneath him. He tried reaching for his blade, which had reverted back to a knife, but was kicked onto his back before he could reach it. 

He glared at the guard with as much ferocity as he could muster with such agony pulsing through his body. The guard raised his gun again, and Keith snarled as it was brought down against his temple, knocking him unconscious. 

* * *

 _They caught Keith,_ Lance thinks, mind muddled by pain but lucid enough to understand that one terrible fact. _They caught Keith._

He watched as the Red Paladin fought - _he came for me, he's fighting for me_ \- and was defeated.

The guard leaned down and grabbed Keith's collar, dragging his limp body through the blood and dirt over to the cell. In any other circumstances Lance would have been ready to lunge at them the second the door was open - but now he could barely move an inch without blinding pain erupting in his leg, still caught between the barbaric metal teeth. 

Lance could do nothing but sit and watch as Keith was dumped unceremoniously beside him, the impact with the ground doing absolutely nothing to rouse him. In the dim light spilling in from the hallway Lance could just barely make out the blood coating the side of his head. He tried to push back his dread, and failed. 

"We'll be back for you shortly to begin the execution," the guard spat at him, and with one last kick to Keith's side he turned, locked the cage again, and exited the room. The dead guards were left sprawled where they had fallen. Keith still hadn't moved.

Lance tried to call his name around the gag, his throat burning with the effort of keeping his tears at bay. He took a deep breath to brace himself before he kicked his uninjured leg over to nudge Keith's shoulder, biting his lip bloody at the jolts the movement sent throughout his body. It was a few long seconds before Keith groaned.

"Mm... Lance?" He fell silent again, and Lance began to worry he had fallen unconscious again. He kicked Keith's shoulder again, and was rewarded with a half-hearted glare through barely opened eyes. Slowly, painfully, the Red Paladin lifted himself onto his hands and knees and crawled over to Lance to remove the gag from between his teeth and the rope from his wrists. Then he collapsed back against the wall Lance was propped against.

"Keith," he sighed, just about collapsing with relief, rubbing his raw wrists with shaking hands. "Dude, you scared me. What the hell - why didn't you keep going? Why did you-"

"They're going to - _ah_ \- kill you... I couldn't just-"

"They're gonna kill _both_ of us, now," Lance slowly shifted until he was relieving pressure from his leg and the trap. Every minute movement made the teeth grind against the bone of his ankle, and he wanted desperately to reach down and yank the whole fucking thing off of him. But he knew that he would only bleed out. _Lesser of two evils at this point, I suppose,_ he thought bleakly. 

"L'nce?" Lance looked away from his ankle and at the Red Paladin, who was looking at him through heavy lidded eyes. "You good?" Lance snorted. 

"Well, dude, I gotta be honest with you. This is the most painful fucking thing I've ever experienced. Hands down," he gripped his thigh just above the makeshift bandage in a white knuckled grip. "So, no. No, I'm pretty _fucking_ far from 'good'." Keith only sighed, closing his eyes and resting his head - _it's_ _still bleeding_ , Lance noted dully - against the cold stone behind him. 

"R-right," Keith muttered, "sorry. Wassa dumb question." Lance felt his concern growing as Keith's speech slurred. 

"Are _you_ good? That was a pretty hard hit to the head - a-and how many times have you been shot?" Keith huffed out a short breath that might have been a laugh. 

"Guess it doesn't really matter now. They're g'nna kill us no matter what," Lance started to protest, but another bolt of agony stopped him short. He swallowed thickly and turned to look at the carnage outside their cell. 

"Yeah," he conceded quietly. "Yeah, I suppose you've got a point there."

* * *

Lance dozed. He tried not to - the last thing he wanted was to wake up suddenly on an execution platform, not that he'd be able to do much about it even if he was awake. Still, blood loss and agony and exhaustion combined left him no choice in the matter. He dozed. So did Keith, more worryingly. Lance had lost a lot of blood, and his leg was _so_ painful, but they'd at least given him a bandage, if the rag could even be called that, and the trap was still plugging up his wounds in a sickening way. Keith's wounds, on the other hand, were open and oozing. Even now, in the scarce light, after Lance had slept for god knows how long, he could still see blood slowly leaking out of the blackened holes in Keith's Paladin armour. He didn't know how much longer Keith was going to last.

 _He doesn't need to last, idiot_ , his cruel brain reminded him. _We're both going to die soon anyway. Why not let him pass in his sleep like this rather than in whatever painful way those assholes are planning for us?_ Lance stubbornly ignored that part of his brain, and reached over laboriously to shake Keith's shoulder until he groaned and blinked awake.

"What..."

"Stay awake, man. Please."

"You w're sleepin' too..."

"No. No, I was just resting my eyes a bit. I never _slept_. This isn't the time to sleep."

"Liar."

"Shut up and keep your eyes open."

"Why-"

Footsteps echoed in the corridor, and they looked at each other with wide eyes. Lance tried to find something to say to Keith, some kind of consolation - but what consolation was there? They were both about to die. There was nothing they could do about it, no way for them to fight back. Their bayards were god knows where, Keith's Marmora knife was lying were he had dropped it outside their cell, out of reach. They were going to die. _This is it._ Lance squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his head back against the wall, willing away his tears and panic and terror.

"L-Lance," Keith started as the footsteps finally reached the room they were in, but he cut himself off with a sigh that almost sounded like a sob. Lance looked at him again, the idea of Keith scared enough to _cry_ unbearable to him - but Keith didn't look scared. He was looking at the door with wide eyes, teary but _relieved_ , and when Lance turned around he immediately saw why.

"Shiro," he breathed. The Black Paladin was standing in the doorway - the light shining from behind him made it impossible to see his face, but that armour, that silhouette, was such an unmistakable source of comfort and protection and safety that Lance felt no doubt at all that it was him. "Shiro-"

"Guys, I found them. Hunk - follow the - the blood. I think we'll need to carry them out," he started toward the cell, stepping over the corpses on the floor with barely a glance at them, and as he got closer to the cell Lance could make out the paleness of his face, the fear and relief in his eyes. Lance tried to grin at him, to reassure him that it wasn't as bad as it looks - but who was he kidding? It most definitely was. This mission had turned into such a god damn mess, he was exhausted.

"Are you guys - no, stupid question, of course you're not okay, I had to follow a trail of _blood_ to find you," he heard Shiro mutter to himself, rambling rather uncharacteristically. "Just - hang on tight, okay? We'll get you both out of here, and we'll take you back to the Castle, and get you into pods - and you'll be fine, okay?" Lance nodded, and lifted a hand to give him a shaky thumbs up, and somehow managed a smile. Shiro grinned weakly back at him, before turning to the still quiet Red Paladin. The grin disappeared from his face, and when he whispered, "Keith," his voice held a tremor. Lance turned and found Keith had passed out again, skin ashen, armour soaked in so much blood there was barely any white left visible. But he was breathing, just barely, and Lance held onto that as he heard Shiro shout down the comms for Hunk to _hurry, because they need pods now, they're running out of time -_

There was a humming followed by a loud clang, and Lance turned - too quickly, god, he felt dizzy - to see that Shiro had cut through the lock of the cell door, and was now crouching in front of them both. He looked at Lance's leg and swallowed thickly, reaching out to rest a hand on his shoulder.

"'m fine," Lance lied, smiling again. "But Keith..."

"He'll be fine, too," Shiro said quickly, "you both will. Hunk is almost-" As if summoned by magic, footsteps echoed again down the corridor, and a few seconds later the Yellow Paladin sprinted into the room, almost tripping over one of the guards. He looked over to the cell, and quickly followed Shiro into it.

"Guys - Lance, oh my _god_ , are you-" he caught sight of Lance's leg, and went pale so fast Lance was worried he was going to pass out, too. "Oh, that looks bad. That - that looks _really_ bad. Oh, wow. Okay-"

"Hunk," Shiro said firmly, turning to him and shifting over so that he was kneeling next to Keith. "You need to carry Lance, okay? We need to get them out of here, they've both lost way too much blood already. They can't afford to lose any more." Hunk blinked, and looked over at Keith, silent and still and dead to the world. He nodded shakily, hanging his bayard on his belt and crouching in front of Lance as Shiro began to maneuver Keith into his arms.

"D-don't f'rget his knife," Lance murmured, lifting a heavy hand to point at it where it lay. Hunk followed his gaze, and after a moment's hesitation hurried out the cell to pick it up and hang it next to his bayard. He returned to Lance's side quickly, and looked at him apologetically.

"This is definitely _not_ gonna be fun, man. You ready?" Lance gulped, and reached out to squeeze Hunk's shoulder.

"No," he answered honestly. "Just do it."

They both braced themselves. Even so, when Hunk smoothly slid his arms under Lance's legs and arms and lifted him into the air, Lance just couldn't manage to hold back a strangled scream.

He passed out to the sound of Hunk calling his name.

* * *

Lance woke from the pod slowly. He allowed himself a few minutes of basking in the warm safety of whoever's arms had caught him - Hunk, he surmised immediately, recognising the smell and the feeling and the presence - and only opened his eyes when he heard Pidge call out in a small voice behind him. 

"L-Lance? You okay?" He turned to her, and smiled in response, and she grinned back at him before launching herself on top of him. Luckily Hunk was still supporting him - actually, he was holding him so tightly Lance doubted he would let go any time soon. 

"I'm good, guys. I'm good. Just t-tired," he yawned to prove just how exhausted he was, hoping to earn a laugh from Hunk and a derisive snort from Pidge, but all he got was squeezed tighter. "Guys?"

"You _scared_ us," Hunk whispered, face buried in his hair. "We managed to track the bayards - but when we found them, you guys weren't there. And then when we went underground it took us so long to find you... we had to follow a trail of your _blood_. We - we'd kind of assumed the worst." Lance winced guiltily. 

"Sorry," he muttered, wiggling until he could wrap his arms awkwardly around the two of them. They held each other for a moment, and Lance was just about ready to let himself drift to sleep like this, but then he remembered - "Keith!" He pushed himself back and out of their arms, looking around frantically, "Where-"

"Whoa, whoa - relax, man. Lance. _Relax_ , he's fine. He's still in his pod. _Lance_." Lance looked back at Hunk, then over to where his finger was pointing. He almost sobbed with relief.

Shiro was all but collapsed in a chair in front of the pod, and was in so deep a sleep that he hadn't been roused at all by their conversation. Keith was still in stasis, as Hunk had said. Lance took in the dried blood on his face - their armour had been removed, he realised, only then taking in the soft, pajama-like clothing he had been changed into. 

"We, uh," Pidge spoke up when she saw him examining the fabric, "we had to change you both out of your armour. The t-trap, it had driven some of the shattered plate into your flesh. We had to remove the pieces before you could go into the pod, so that you didn't heal around it," she looked ill at the memory, and Hunk had gone that familiar shade of green that always foretold copious amounts of vomit. Lance discreetly stepped out of the probable line of fire. "Same for Keith," Pidge continued, "The blaster had - the flesh around the wounds was sort of melded with his flight suit. It took a while for us to remove it all. Shiro was just about out of his mind with worry. He was convinced you were both going to bleed out before we could get you into the pods."

Lance swallowed thickly, "Yeah, well. It _was_ pretty close, wasn't it?" Hunk nodded, eyes squeezed shut and lips pressed firmly together. It took a long moment for them all to gather themselves again. Finally, Hunk opened his eyes, and flashed a weak smile. 

"There's a snack box for you over by Shiro, and one for Keith, too, when he wakes up. We think he'll be out in another couple of hours, if you're up for waiting?" Lance took a shuddering breath, and banished any lingering terror to the back of his mind to fret over later. He smiled, and nodded, and followed Hunk over to where Shiro slept. Pidge followed a few moments later, arms wrapped around two heavy blankets. 

They hunkered down together on the floor, Lance sandwiched between his two closest friends, two blankets wrapped tightly around the three of them, a box of that strangely delicious space goo cradled in his hands. He had barely eaten half of it before Hunk had to set it aside for him to finish later. Then, exhausted and still bloody, but _alive_ and safe, he allowed himself to follow Shiro's lead. He slept.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please feel free to leave a comment, and if you want to request a prompt from my Bad Things Happen Bingo card, you can find it on my Tumblr - cha-lii


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